“Souls–which wrestle with themselves and cry out in the plazas and in the streets–have an eternal destiny: we are trains without brakes moving towards eternity.” –Alberto Hurtado, S.J.

It started with a kiss. My vocation to the priesthood–it started with a kiss. It was a swift, gentle, tender kiss. It was a pure kiss, a true kiss. I remember it well because it left me empty. Its beauty made it all the more difficult for me to accept the fact that it didn’t make me feel the way I thought it would make me feel. At that moment, somehow, I realized that I was made for something more than romance with another person. I wanted love with God–God alone.

That which can be said of romance can also be said of money, of success, of all the other things with which I thought I could fill my heart. These things were just things, just ideas, just presuppositions that our society told me I needed. Nothing would stick. I sought more.

While studying at the University of Oxford in England, I was processing these feelings. Who I was, existentially, told me that I longed for infinity. Nothing short of endless possibilities would fill me. We are passing, this earth is passing, everything is passing away; but God remains. Only God’s infinite potential proved to be the matching puzzle piece that fit the shape of my soul. I was, in the words of my vow patron Alberto Hurtado, a train running on the track towards eternity. Could I deny it?

I tried to, for a time, but the one who fights against God loses. He won, and, in the end, I won. Within months, I sent in my application to the Jesuits. They accepted me, and here I am two years later.

A few weeks ago I solidified my desire to seek fulfillment in God alone. I took perpetual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I promised to remain in the Jesuits forever. It’s a promise I seek to keep. God will give me the grace to keep it just as He gave me the longing in my soul to make it.

Perhaps you have felt similar to the way that I felt. God is calling you. I don’t know to what, but I know that He calls each of us to something special with Him. May He grant us the grace to say “yes” boldly.